Wednesday, May 30, 2012

She's About to Pop!

In July, I'm going to become an aunt. My sister-in-law and brother
are expecting their first baby, Isaac, and we're all very excited to
welcome him to our family. My other sister-in-law, Lisa, and I planned a
baby shower a couple of weeks ago. We decided on the popular "She's About to Pop!" theme and scoured Pinterest for ideas.

We used shades of blue, turquoise, and green along with lots of circles in our decor to stick with the pop theme. There are a ton of fabulous ideas out there for this theme, so I'll just highlight a few of the things that we added our unique twist to.

I think that the cousins-to-be might be more excited than anyone!

I decided that the large space above our mantel needed some baby shower love, so I got an engineer's print made at Staples with a picture of the mommy and daddy. I used spray adhesive to mount it to a large scrap piece of plywood. The print was less than $3, so it was an inexpensive way to add a big impact piece. I also pulled an old skid out of my dad's burn pile. I put it there a few months back after I was experimenting with ways to take the wood apart. I gave up on that, but resurrected the skid when I needed a way to hang up letters for Isaac's name. The letters are a combination of salvaged sign letters and wooden letters from the craft store that I painted and distressed. I borrowed my brother's old teddy bear and tiny baseball cap from my mom's cedar chest for some sweet personalization from Isaac's daddy.

Our shower was in the afternoon, so we didn't serve a complete meal. We tried to make each food work with the POP theme. However, I neglected to take a picture of the actual food. Our menu consisted of popcorn chicken (from Chick Fil A), Popeye's spinach dip, fruit pops (fruit on bamboo skewers), and jalapeno poppers (from the frozen food section at the grocery). On the dessert table, we had cake pops, push pops, and Snap, Crackle, Pop! Rice Krispie Treats. Lisa made all of the cake pops and push pops and they were the definite hit of the shower. She did a great job!

I was trying to come up with a way to serve a large number of cake pops and still make it look nice. I was playing around with the idea of putting styrofoam in a box or container when my mom suggested pool noodles. Have I mentioned that she is a genius??? I ended up finding blue and green pool noodles at the Dollar Tree and cut them with a serrated knife to fit just inside the opening in my buffet cabinet. We stacked them and hot glued them together and added a scrap board on the bottom for some extra weight. Then, we took a small screwdriver and punched holes for the cake pop sticks. The noodles held them perfectly!

Behind this display, I added the bottom section of the skid from the mantel that I cut off with a jigsaw. These letters are also a combo of salvaged sign letters and painted/distressed wooden craft store finds.

Instead of playing games, we had all the supplies for our guests to decorate a onesie for baby Isaac. My mom prepared fabric iron-ons ahead of time and we had plenty of buttons, paint, fabric markers, etc. available so people could be creative.

I was a little worried about this project. I was afraid that people would be reluctant to participate, but our family and friends did an awesome job! Look at those cute onesies!

Before we know it, we will be seeing a cute, squishy little baby in those clothes! I can't wait!